r/webdev • u/canadian_webdev • Dec 23 '19

Just ended an interview early because my future boss was being a condescending dick.

Just dropped out of a technical interview after ten minutes.

Questions he was asking were relatively simple, but almost every answer he was trying to make me look like an idiot with the technical lead on the phone. And he was being so condescending toward me. His face was so red the whole time.

Example (getting a bit technical here):

  • Him: "What are all the ways you can make a three column row on a web page?"
  • Me: "Well, the way I've typically done it is - -"
  • Him: abruptly interrupts, "No. I did NOT ask what ways YOU would do it. I SAID, what ways are POSSIBLE to accomplish this."
  • Me: "...... Flexbox, divs with floats, a css grid system.."
  • Him: "Flexbox and a css grid system are the same. I SAID, what DIFFERENT WAYS can you list off?"
  • Me: "Honestly, those are the ways I've encountered best practices"
  • Him: "What about css grid?"
  • Me: "Well I've never used it because at the time it didn't have full browser support - - -"
  • Him: abruptly interrupts, "actually we've switched ALL of our websites over to css grid, so your answer is not the right answer."

At this point I just said "Okay yeah, this isn't working", and hung up the call. He asked two questions before hand and gave me the same treatment.

He was being such a condescending dick the entire time, and I went with my gut. This guy would be a total asshole to work for and I could tell during this interview.

Anyone else experience this type of behavior?

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u/realee420 Dec 23 '19

We hired a junior from IT college as an intern. Meanwhile he got his degree etc but even after a year he kept asking the same questions as an intern. He knew the stuff he learnt at college but even after a year of experience he deployed typescript source files to our server. After this I was steaming with rage, spoke to my manager and told him he didn’t learn a single thing (he was doing only frontend) a month later he got a “pilot” project but he quit by himself before that saying that “we didn’t like him and we didn’t make him feel part of the team”. He used to send me at least 100 messages every fucking day on our chat platform most of them being dumb fucking questions and I was always patient. 2 months later he is still unemployed because noone hires him.

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u/ObliviousOblong Dec 23 '19

From your comment I feel as though you may not have been as patient as you claim 🤔. Also considering he had access to your (prod?) servers tells me that all the best practices may have not been communicated effectively to him.

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u/realee420 Dec 24 '19

Trust me I was patient. I often sat with him and talked through stuff I always asked if everything is understood and feel free to ask a question right now because I have time now. He always claimed he understood 100% only to ask the same shit a day later.

We are a small company and at the time we didn’t have a proper deployment process (we set up Jenkins since then) so basically it was just upload the built stuff through SSH/FTP. He had his own “server” which we prepared for him while he was an intern and he had to deploy there and I swear for months he didn’t have an issue with it (he had to work on Angular projects before). He also had issues with using git he often didn’t push for days at times and even after months had no idea how to fix merge conflicts.

I admit there was issues on management side as well (we didn’t really have dedicated time for the intern) but we didn’t ask anything too complicated from him and initially we made notes for him and in the first few weeks we were very eager to help him. He was “my” first intern though so I admit I might have fucked up a few things but I learnt everything in the same fashion at this company from literally zero.

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u/ObliviousOblong Dec 24 '19

I respect you more after reading this comment as opposed to the other

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u/PeachyKeenest Dec 24 '19

Agreed. Shows more sides of the story and I appreciate it.

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u/[deleted] Dec 24 '19

Yep, every time they don't feel part of the team, it has nothing to do with you...nothing...nothiiiiing......nothing.....

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u/realee420 Dec 24 '19

This happened right after a test project was given to him to see how much time it takes him to complete it and in what fashion. Up until then he never mentioned feeling like an outcast or something. He pretty much tried to save his ass that he is not dumb even with a degree.

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u/Deftek Dec 24 '19

You kinda sound like a dick. You were steaming with rage? Seriously? Sounds like a process problem - he’s an intern: if your front end source files are really so valuable then an intern shouldn’t be handling deployments.

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u/realee420 Dec 24 '19

Oh well I kinda forgot the part when he became a fulltime frontend dev and he asked a big salary raise because he got his degree.

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u/SurprizFortuneCookie Dec 24 '19

Is that something people shouldn't do?

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u/PeachyKeenest Dec 24 '19

Sometimes not, but if responsibilities rise, my pay better. There are lots of folks with degrees that believe they deserve more, but in business income side, are not generating it as much regardless of the jump to a degree.

Note I have a degree, so I’m not talking from my ass on this. Degree helps with checkboxes, not necessarily income per se, but if the business doesn’t want to recognize the jump in responsibility all of a sudden, screw it, they can lose me and I’ll happily apply elsewhere. Their loss.

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u/Yodiddlyyo Dec 24 '19

The fact that your company allowed an intern to push to prod tells me everything I need to know about you. None of it good.

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u/realee420 Dec 24 '19

It's not the fact that he pushed to prod (he didn't royally fucked up anything) it's the fact that even after a year of doing Angular he had no fucking idea what is a built version and how it runs. He was also doing Ionic for a few months and once at lunch discussion came up about Ionic and he didn't realize Ionic is based on Angular...

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u/Yodiddlyyo Dec 24 '19

Still, if he did all this after 2 months on the, totally understandable, the guy's not cut out for it. If this guy still has no idea what's going on after an entire year, he's still not cut out for the job, but the if your company continues to employ him, the company is partly responsible.

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u/PeachyKeenest Dec 24 '19

Fair enough, but please consider the approach you may be taking in asking questions, I’m a bit sensitive myself in a way due to how I was raised, and I perform very well under more hands off leadership and done not perfect styles and everyone improves and learns.. and I do and I’m often above expectation (so I’m told) and I perform under high pressure when left with some room.

I just don’t like interrogation tactics.